Wanting a drink
 

I'm on day 3 sober..... again..... I physically feel better but am so craving a drink. I usually start drinking right after work. About 1/2 a large bottle of vodka every night.... pass out and wake up the next day feeling like **** saying to myself I will never drink again. By the time 4:00 comes around I'm ready to do it all over again. I have a business trip coming up and everyone will be drinking and if I don't drink everyone freaks out. I need for alcohol to quit becoming part of my identity. I will not drink today. I will worry about tomorrow.... tomorrow.

yep let tommorrow worry about tomorrow and this "Everyone" doesnt have to deal with your headache and misery but you however do which STINKS. If they had to deal with it like you do they may feel differently.

I know the routoine all to well I coulda just about died the prior night from drinking so heavily but by noon i'm doing role call taking a head count seeing how many babies are in the fridge and if i gotta hit the store for more. and by 4 i was dieing to have one and by 5 i was. In the end i couldnt even wait till 4 i'd be cracking one at 3 or even 9am if i had to calm my nerves.

The good news is once you quit you dont have to worry about any of it anymore in due time which is really nice.

Coming here was a great idea LadyBug. There's a whole world of things do to other than drinking tonight. Spending some time here would fall into that category of course!

Take a different way home from work for example. Cook something different you haven't had in a while for dinner. Take a walk. Take a bath. Plant some vegetables. Read a book. Watch a good movie. That should keep you busy for a while...then come back here when you need more to do!

Long time no see. Half a bottle is a lot. If you had come here and said tomorrow was day 1, I'd have told you go to the doctor and detox under supervision.

Early sobriety is difficult, and the discomfort of not drinking is incredible. But you have to get through it to be sober. I think at day three it was minute by minute for me.

Three years is a heck of a relapse. Giving any thought to how you are going to accomplish staying sober once you've got some time under your belt?

I'm on Day 3. I refuse to drink today. I already hit a rough patch and made it through. How about skipping the vodka and meet up with me in the May class tomorrow AM? Yes?

Make sure you eat well tonight!

I just wish I didn't like it so much.

My plan is to just take it one day at a time. Today I will not drink.

Good job ladybug

Welcome back ladybug :)
it's never too late to make a change :)

let them.

D

I'm with Dee. If anyone "freaks out", ignore them. They don't live in your skin. You are doing this for your own well being, who cares what anyone else thinks!

Well done, you are almost through the worst of the withdrawal period, and it takes incredible determination to not drink. Let's not make it all for nothing. Are you thinking about a plan for staying sober long term?

A lot of us could string together quite a few days, one day at a time, on pure determination, but there often comes a time when we get tired of the discipline required, our guard is down, and someone says would you like a drink? and in the most casual way, without a thought of the consequences, we say Oh thanks, and we are right back to square one, if we are lucky.

It would be nice if we can find a way to have a 24/7 reliable defence against the first drink, where we have no need to drink, no matter what. It is worth looking for.

Hi Ladybug,

Day 3 is really excellent. From my experience, that's the worst. By that point the stomach issues and shaking have pretty much gone away and I feel "well enough" to drink again. But man, it feels good, right? So I try to remind myself "If you feel this good today, imagine how much better still you'll feel tomorrow!"

Something that caught my eye - you wanted to drink last night seemingly because of or maybe as a rationale related to your upcoming business trip. Are you sure you weren't being strong last night so that you have an excuse to fold on the trip?

Any professional person has no business "freaking out" if a colleague opts out of drinking. I'd suggest that you arm yourself with some tools in advance (assuming you can't get out of the trip). One idea is to prepare a ready answer for why you don't want to drink, "Been having some stomach issues" is likely true and anyone but a problem with alcohol would totally understand why you wouldn't want to drink. The other suggestion I have is to devise your escape strategy - whether that's getting back to your room at the earliest opportunity or hanging out with another person who is not drinking.

You know how they say "Hang in there; it gets better?"
It really does!

There are proven techniques to help cope with and get through cravings. You can google this or pick up tools from the SMART recovery web site. Work on this before he cravings hit.

Wishing you a happy and sober day today, Ladybug66.

Today, I will not drink.

Taking it one day at a time really helped me and then I got to the point where I didn't need to reassure myself with "just today, tomorrow we will see" because not using just became my new normal and I no longer thought about using all day.

Drinking is pretty common in our society, but that doesn't mean that you need to go with the group. I have found once people see you a couple times and see that you don't drink that they then start to just assume you won't be drinking and instead of freaking out that you aren't drinking they would freak out if you did. Your identity doesn't have to be tied with drinking, it can become tied with not drinking.

When I first got sober a lot of family members would offer me a drink and when I said no thank you they would say "omg I am sorry I asked I just thought you were a heroin addict so drinking was okay". Most people don't understand addiction, but it isn't up to them to understand. We can control the information that we have on addiction, we can control the work we put into our sobriety and recovery, and we can control whether we give into peer pressure or not.

You can do this!

Thank you for the kind words Adeline. I am ready for it to feel normal not to drink instead of full anxiety when the craving starts.

hang in there ladybug your doing good in time the anxiety subsides more and more.

For me it felt like i was wasting my time with the whole sobriety thing in the begining. i mean really 1 day to the next did not feel any better to me. but 1 week to the next sorta did and 1 month to the next sorta did. I also new that going back to drinking was clearly no solution so the only thing I could do was move forward cross my fingers that life would get better and it did thankfully.

Hang in there.

Thank you so much.

Me either. Good on ya!

Hi ladybug, great job on making it to day 3! I think the first few days are definitely the hardest. When I was in rehab, they had us write down a bunch of enjoyable activities we could do when/if the urge to drink hits. Things like read a good book, watch a movie, take a walk, do yoga, watch something good on tv, exercise -- whatever you like to do. I realize you can't do these things in front of your colleagues when you're on a business trip...but maybe it can give you something to look forward to after you've said, "I'll have a club soda with lime."